Enhanced Colleague discounts to stay & Great Food sales

Enhanced colleague discounts are here to stay – 20% off in Food stores & up to £500 off in Your Co-op Travel

Colleagues shopping in our Food stores in the two weeks up to Christmas benefitted from discounts totalling over £200,000 with the total spend up on last year. We can see how important the enhanced discount is for colleagues and I am pleased to confirm that we will now retain this level of discount for the whole of 2024. We will also extend the enhanced travel discount of up to £500 beyond the end of January through to the Summer. We want to give you more reasons to buy products and services from Your Co-op and we will continue to look at how we can enhance the scheme in the future.

Great Food sales over Christmas

Focusing on Food retail, as usual, during January, we are starting to see Food retailers publish their trading results for the Christmas period. Despite a challenging forecast, we were pleased that our sales over the 4 weeks of Christmas were over £45 Million, which was in line with the budget we set at the beginning of the year. Brilliant to hear.

We had good increases on Christmas lines including the Les Pionniers Champagne and the truly irresistible Mince Pies that were highlighted in my Christmas blog, so hopefully you managed to get your hands on some of these fantastic products! Like-for-like sales outperformed the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) convenience sector over the period, and we also came out more favourable than the other Co-operative Societies we compare against.

Once again, I want to thank all of our remarkable colleagues who made this Christmas so successful.

Meeting Jayne Loydon, Customer Service Assistant at Highworth Food store

We also managed to surpass our Food membership target of 35% over Christmas and means we are in a great position to surpass our 40% target in 2024. A collective well done to all the teams involved across our support office and colleagues in-store who made this goal possible.

Looking ahead to 2024, we have some exciting events planned including celebrating 180 years of Co-operatives, the 30th anniversary of Fairtrade and the Fairer Living Festival. I am excited about what the year will bring in building a fairer, more sustainable, and ethical future for our members.

In the festive spirit - Kieran Allen, Store Manager and Amy Eastaff, Team Manager at Bourton-on-the-water Food store

Take part in our Colleague Pulse Survey

Finally, the latest colleague pulse survey closes this Sunday, so if you haven’t already, please take 5 minutes to complete it. An important way to let us know your feedback, it helps us improve Your Co-op for the better. Plus if you do take part, you could be in with the chance of winning a £20 Your Co-op voucher. To find out more click here.